Can't they repurpose the tower? They are still developing new rockets, even if it's not the same one when the tower was designed. What makes it so this tower can only be used for a particular project that happens to have been scrubbed? This is NASA we're talking about; they can find a way to work with it.
I have to wonder, though.. what would happen if a substantial portion of voters left the ballot blank when there are only R and D options? Wouldn't an election where a large chunk of the populace pointedly abstained (as opposed to just not voting, which can be mistaken for apathy) make a point? What would it take to get a "None of the Above" option on our ballots?
Semantics, yes, but you can't grade "hotness" on either the Fahrenheit or Celsius scales by a percentage; otherwise 1 degree is infinitely "hotter" than 0 degrees!
To be fair, in Kelvin this is a 19% increase, so the semantic difference seems irrelevant. To put it in perspective, though, a 20% increase from room temperature (25 C or 298 K) would be 85 C (358 K); I'm pretty sure you'd agree that's "far" hotter!
That's a fair question; though in the published article, they actually address gas as well too. And they come to the conclusion that, yes, nuclear is better than natural gas in both greenhouse emissions and pollution related deaths.
The problem with the other "clean energy" mechanisms is that none of them are very good for base-line power generation yet, except perhaps hydro. Not every location is situated in a spot where they can make use of hydroelectric power, though, so likely the best solution for the time being is nuclear supplemented with other clean energy production. I think that's essentially what these scientists are arguing for, but I retain the right to be completely off my rocker.
Actually, whether the OP intended the error or not, this is a good example of irony. If intended, OP is using verbal irony, saying one thing while intending or implying another: says that spell checkers prevent spelling errors while using a perfect example of a spelling error and checker can't find. If unintended, it's great example of dramatic irony: making an erroneous statement in a situation where readers are aware of the error.
Either way, I do recognize irony. Irony would never punch someone in the face; that wouldn't be subtle enough. I didn't expect the down-mod. Oh well, life goes on!
Methinks there's far more to it than you imply... Reaching the tech to do what you're describing here takes more than just resources; it takes some significant changes in our understanding of Physics.
Let's look at your idea: you want something that can charge an electric car's battery in 10 seconds. Ok; a typical Prius battery is rated at about 4 kWh. That's roughly 15 million Joules of energy. To deliver that much energy in 10 s, you need a power supply that provides 1.5 million watts of power. At the battery voltage (~275 V), that's a current of over 5000 A, or only an order of magnitude less than a typical lightning strike.
Even assuming it's technically feasible to have a superconducting grid (unlikely without high, as in ambient, temperature superconductors), the cable from your power supply to the car battery probably won't be made of the same stuff if it's necessary for a person to manipulate it (eg. connect it to the car that is parked anywhere within a few 10s of centimeters from the supply). If copper wire is used, there is no standard size of wire made that can handle 5 kA for a period of 10 s, and even if you made one it would no longer qualify as "possible for a person to manipulate it".
So: building your superconducting grid itself requires new physics that we don't have yet, not just adequate resources. Even with said grid, charging a battery in the amount of time you suggest deals with extremely high currents that are likely unsafe to use.
I'm not saying your idea is impossible, just pointing out that there is much more to this problem than just a lack of resources.
There is a community, and it's thriving. It's not hard to find; plenty of bloggers are providing simple tutorials for learning how to use it, and the forums at 43oh.com are very responsive and helpful.
Perhaps not, but the community is growing. Besides, how can the community ever develop if everyone says "don't bother, there's no community yet"? Communities can't grow if nobody moves in.
My opinion, between the two: if you just want to put things together, go with an Arduino. If you really want to understand how it all works and don't mind putting in the time, go with the MSP430. Then start contributing to the community (in either case).
Silicon, despite science fiction's love for it, is an extremely inflexible atom: it can't form bonds with any of the major non-metals we use (oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus)...
You know; I've started to wonder if we're too hard on the sounds in space issue. A close passing ship? I actually could see that as causing noise.. after all, the people inside are not in a vacuum. Did the Apollo astronauts hear their engines firing? A close passing ship could cause a vibration in your ship's hull (caused by the impact of whatever material is leaving their engines or some other mechanism), which generates sound in the ears of the people inside, carried through the internal atmosphere. If we go more science fiction, a "warp drive" type system could cause bending/vibration in the hull of our or a nearby ship too. Why wouldn't we hear our own ship or a ship passing by in space?
Just some speculation.. until I get there myself, it's hard to say just what I'll hear.
Mormonism is quite crazy as a religious belief though their believers seem to be very nice personalities.
Do you say that because it's popular to brand the LDS religion as crazy, or do you have a specific reason to believe so? Come talk with us about what we really believe; you might be surprised. Oh, you may encounter a couple people who might encourage you to convert, maybe even the over-zealous member who says you have to convert, but you don't. It's still your choice, all the way through.
If you really don't want to risk talking to one, this page may be helpful, at least in terms of the ideas currently popular to point at.
I know one family of Mormons and I have to agree, for the most part, they are batshit crazy.
(emphasis added)
In no way is this exclusive to mormonism.
Can we all stop applying single data points to a broad culture? In no way is this inclusive of Mormonism either, nor to religion as a whole. Some people who ascribe themselves as Mormons or any other religion, perhaps, but not to religion (including the LDS faith) itself.
Do Latter-day Saints believe that they will “get their own planet”? No. This idea is not taught in Latter-day Saint scripture, nor is it a doctrine of the Church. This misunderstanding stems from speculative comments unreflective of scriptural doctrine. Mormons believe that we are all sons and daughters of God and that all of us have the potential to grow during and after this life to become like our Heavenly Father (see Romans 8:16-17). The Church does not and has never purported to fully understand the specifics of Christ’s statement that “in my Father’s house are many mansions” (John 14:2).
they're more or less a free anti-market that governs the non-production of something instead of the production of it.
In other words, when all you have are economists... everything looks like a market.
Perhaps our real problem is that everyone has become too specialized; they see the world from their point of view and can't understand how the world can look different to someone else. If we really want to get serious about solving society's problems, then we need society to do the solving. Societies are made up of politicians, scientists, economists, mechanics, teachers, clergy, merchants, even homeless people and kids. A real solution to climate change requires everyone, so that a proposed solution can be weighed for its benefits from all perspectives.
I'd be all for electing people who take the time to actually learn some science and manual labor skills in addition to (not instead of!) history, law, and economics.
12. On mars...we are on mars...under a democratic president. it took about 30 other countries to help us get there, including fuel from russia, but we're there and exploring it.
You say that as though it's novel... and as though the current administration was responsible for the project going through.
The US has been at Mars for a long time-- and the project that became Curiosity was started in 2004.
Let's look at all of the (successful) trips we've taken to Mars in the US:
Mariner 4 1965 Johnson (D) Mariner 6 1969 Nixon (R) Mariner 7 1969 Nixon (R) Mariner 9 1971 Nixon (R) First Orbital Insertion Viking 1 1976 Ford (R) First US Landing on Surface Viking 2 1976 Ford (R) Mars Global Surveyor 1997 Clinton (D) Mars Pathfinder 1997 Clinton (D) Mars Odyssey 2001 Bush (R) MER-A (Spirit) 2004 Bush (R) MER-B (Opportunity) 2004 Bush (R) Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 2006 Bush (R) Pheonix 2008 Bush (R) Dawn 2009 Obama (D) MSL (Curiosity) 2012 Obama (D)
Looking at that list there seem to be a lot of R's.... but then again, many of these projects were started well before whoever happened to be in office was there when they arrived at Mars.
Don't get me wrong; Curiosity is an incredible achievement, and I'm really excited about its success, as well as hopeful for the new project just announced. But it does bug me that a lot of people are treating it as though it's a once-in-a-generation achievement, akin to Armstrong walking on the moon. Fact is, we've been at Mars for a long time. Fact is, both Democrats and Republicans have been around while we've been doing it.
I got a big kick out of our current President's science adviser speaking at the landing-- I stayed up to watch the whole thing. He said something to the effect of "No other nation has ever been to Mars; no other nation has ever been to another planet." I remember distinctly, because I was drinking a glass of water at the time, and ended up with half of it on me as I choked. The next morning, all of the news articles I had looked up to verify that Holdren had indeed said this had conveniently changed the quote to something completely different, showing that somebody pointed out that he had just made a big error.
Fact: the Russians were the first to land on Mars. Fact: the Russians have also been quite successful with landings on Venus. Fact: the ESA, JAXA and the UK have all been working on projects to Mars. Mars Express is a successful ESA orbiter. The UK sent the Beagle lander with Mars Express, but it was lost in the landing. That's nothing to be ashamed of.. every country that has tried to go to Mars has had failures. If these three agencies keep trying, they'll have plenty of success in studying Mars, or any other planet they choose to visit.
Stuxnet, Duqu and Flamer-Skywiper being the previous iterations of the same Operation Project Olympic attack plan.
This is not a complete sentence; there's no verb.
Last month, President Obama's staff has admitted to the New York Times...
We use present perfect tense for referring to events that happened at an unspecified time in the past. You can't use it when you specify that the event happened last month.
...there is a joint Israel-U.S. cybermilitary operation was behind the mishaps Iranians have recently been suffering with their UF6 gas refining centrifuge systems in the Natanz and Fordo plants.
The rest of this sentence is too long and complicated. In addition, it has two verbs. Compounding the problem, the two verbs have opposing tenses.
I really do dislike grammar nazis, and I try to avoid ever saying anything about errors since I make plenty myself, but these kinds of errors are hard to read and understand. Timothy, do you even read things before they get posted?!
</rant, hopefully forever.>
Seriously, I do appreciate what all the/. editors do. It's hard to parse through all the article submissions that you get and make sure everything makes sense. It's also hard for us to parse the posted article summaries when the grammar mistakes make one's head spin.
Whether evolution would ‘replay the tape of life’ if given the opportunity has long fascinated biologists. Paleogenetics via laboratory resurrected ancient genes not only reveals information regarding ancestral phenotypes and environments but also provides an opportunity to ‘replay’ the molecular tape of life.
IANAB, but it doesn't make sense to me that this experiment does what she is claiming. I can understand learning about "ancestral phenotypes", but "replay the molecular tape of life"? That would only be possible if the cells were exposed to the same conditions they would have 500 million years ago, correct? With environmental conditions being a chaotic system, you'd have to get it exactly right-- impossible given we don't have an exact knowledge of those conditions. At best you might argue that you can show chaotic fluctuations in the system have little impact if the evolution takes nearly the same track, but then you'd have to wait 500 million years for that... Unless modern E. Coli is more prolific than it's ("great-" * 10e9) + "grandparents."
I would think if you're examining fixed vs multi-point evolutionary paths, a better experiment would be to clone a number of cells (cloned to ensure identical genetics at the start) and grow them in isolated but (very nearly) identical environments. Using ancient DNA sequences won't help us see if the path leads to modern genes without waiting a few thousand millenia.
Again, IANAB, but the premise of this experiment seems ill-placed. Any biologists around that can clarify for us?
Slashdot Mirror
Can't they repurpose the tower? They are still developing new rockets, even if it's not the same one when the tower was designed. What makes it so this tower can only be used for a particular project that happens to have been scrubbed? This is NASA we're talking about; they can find a way to work with it.
Lennart Poettering's systemd, who is the past
But I thought systemd was the future?
I have to wonder, though.. what would happen if a substantial portion of voters left the ballot blank when there are only R and D options? Wouldn't an election where a large chunk of the populace pointedly abstained (as opposed to just not voting, which can be mistaken for apathy) make a point? What would it take to get a "None of the Above" option on our ballots?
Well, with that kind of logic, she's never going to reach
7. Profit!
Semantics, yes, but you can't grade "hotness" on either the Fahrenheit or Celsius scales by a percentage; otherwise 1 degree is infinitely "hotter" than 0 degrees!
To be fair, in Kelvin this is a 19% increase, so the semantic difference seems irrelevant. To put it in perspective, though, a 20% increase from room temperature (25 C or 298 K) would be 85 C (358 K); I'm pretty sure you'd agree that's "far" hotter!
That's a fair question; though in the published article, they actually address gas as well too. And they come to the conclusion that, yes, nuclear is better than natural gas in both greenhouse emissions and pollution related deaths.
The problem with the other "clean energy" mechanisms is that none of them are very good for base-line power generation yet, except perhaps hydro. Not every location is situated in a spot where they can make use of hydroelectric power, though, so likely the best solution for the time being is nuclear supplemented with other clean energy production. I think that's essentially what these scientists are arguing for, but I retain the right to be completely off my rocker.
You assume I didn't recognize the humor.
Actually, whether the OP intended the error or not, this is a good example of irony. If intended, OP is using verbal irony, saying one thing while intending or implying another: says that spell checkers prevent spelling errors while using a perfect example of a spelling error and checker can't find. If unintended, it's great example of dramatic irony: making an erroneous statement in a situation where readers are aware of the error.
Either way, I do recognize irony. Irony would never punch someone in the face; that wouldn't be subtle enough. I didn't expect the down-mod. Oh well, life goes on!
I know with a spell checker your gauranteed to spell words correctly!
The irony of this post is almost unbelievable...
Methinks there's far more to it than you imply... Reaching the tech to do what you're describing here takes more than just resources; it takes some significant changes in our understanding of Physics.
Let's look at your idea: you want something that can charge an electric car's battery in 10 seconds. Ok; a typical Prius battery is rated at about 4 kWh. That's roughly 15 million Joules of energy. To deliver that much energy in 10 s, you need a power supply that provides 1.5 million watts of power. At the battery voltage (~275 V), that's a current of over 5000 A, or only an order of magnitude less than a typical lightning strike.
Even assuming it's technically feasible to have a superconducting grid (unlikely without high, as in ambient, temperature superconductors), the cable from your power supply to the car battery probably won't be made of the same stuff if it's necessary for a person to manipulate it (eg. connect it to the car that is parked anywhere within a few 10s of centimeters from the supply). If copper wire is used, there is no standard size of wire made that can handle 5 kA for a period of 10 s, and even if you made one it would no longer qualify as "possible for a person to manipulate it".
So: building your superconducting grid itself requires new physics that we don't have yet, not just adequate resources. Even with said grid, charging a battery in the amount of time you suggest deals with extremely high currents that are likely unsafe to use.
I'm not saying your idea is impossible, just pointing out that there is much more to this problem than just a lack of resources.
There is a community, and it's thriving. It's not hard to find; plenty of bloggers are providing simple tutorials for learning how to use it, and the forums at 43oh.com are very responsive and helpful.
Perhaps not, but the community is growing. Besides, how can the community ever develop if everyone says "don't bother, there's no community yet"? Communities can't grow if nobody moves in.
My opinion, between the two: if you just want to put things together, go with an Arduino. If you really want to understand how it all works and don't mind putting in the time, go with the MSP430. Then start contributing to the community (in either case).
I don't have a different phone number for every person I call.
You must know a lot of people that share the same phone.
Probably I missed some variables that have to be taken into account here.
You forgot the thermal radiation asymmetry. Don't worry; you're in good company.
Watch the replay of his lecture and you'll see a lot more. I was lucky enough to be there; very impressive work.
I was going to suggest "Reclaim" or "Recycle".
Silicon, despite science fiction's love for it, is an extremely inflexible atom: it can't form bonds with any of the major non-metals we use (oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus)...
Are you sure about that?
Can we send 546 instead?
You know; I've started to wonder if we're too hard on the sounds in space issue. A close passing ship? I actually could see that as causing noise.. after all, the people inside are not in a vacuum. Did the Apollo astronauts hear their engines firing? A close passing ship could cause a vibration in your ship's hull (caused by the impact of whatever material is leaving their engines or some other mechanism), which generates sound in the ears of the people inside, carried through the internal atmosphere. If we go more science fiction, a "warp drive" type system could cause bending/vibration in the hull of our or a nearby ship too. Why wouldn't we hear our own ship or a ship passing by in space?
Just some speculation.. until I get there myself, it's hard to say just what I'll hear.
Mormonism is quite crazy as a religious belief though their believers seem to be very nice personalities.
Do you say that because it's popular to brand the LDS religion as crazy, or do you have a specific reason to believe so? Come talk with us about what we really believe; you might be surprised. Oh, you may encounter a couple people who might encourage you to convert, maybe even the over-zealous member who says you have to convert, but you don't. It's still your choice, all the way through.
If you really don't want to risk talking to one, this page may be helpful, at least in terms of the ideas currently popular to point at.
I know one family of Mormons and I have to agree, for the most part, they are batshit crazy.
(emphasis added)
In no way is this exclusive to mormonism.
Can we all stop applying single data points to a broad culture? In no way is this inclusive of Mormonism either, nor to religion as a whole. Some people who ascribe themselves as Mormons or any other religion, perhaps, but not to religion (including the LDS faith) itself.
I know I may be a little late to the conversation here, but:
Though I admit, getting my very own planet in the afterlife is a pretty tempting proposition.
From Mormonism-101
Do Latter-day Saints believe that they will “get their own planet”?
No. This idea is not taught in Latter-day Saint scripture, nor is it a doctrine of the Church. This misunderstanding stems from speculative comments unreflective of scriptural doctrine. Mormons believe that we are all sons and daughters of God and that all of us have the potential to grow during and after this life to become like our Heavenly Father (see Romans 8:16-17). The Church does not and has never purported to fully understand the specifics of Christ’s statement that “in my Father’s house are many mansions” (John 14:2).
they're more or less a free anti-market that governs the non-production of something instead of the production of it.
In other words, when all you have are economists... everything looks like a market.
Perhaps our real problem is that everyone has become too specialized; they see the world from their point of view and can't understand how the world can look different to someone else. If we really want to get serious about solving society's problems, then we need society to do the solving. Societies are made up of politicians, scientists, economists, mechanics, teachers, clergy, merchants, even homeless people and kids. A real solution to climate change requires everyone, so that a proposed solution can be weighed for its benefits from all perspectives.
I'd be all for electing people who take the time to actually learn some science and manual labor skills in addition to (not instead of!) history, law, and economics.
12. On mars...we are on mars...under a democratic president. it took about 30 other countries to help us get there, including fuel from russia, but we're there and exploring it.
You say that as though it's novel... and as though the current administration was responsible for the project going through.
The US has been at Mars for a long time-- and the project that became Curiosity was started in 2004.
Let's look at all of the (successful) trips we've taken to Mars in the US:
Mariner 4 1965 Johnson (D)
Mariner 6 1969 Nixon (R)
Mariner 7 1969 Nixon (R)
Mariner 9 1971 Nixon (R) First Orbital Insertion
Viking 1 1976 Ford (R) First US Landing on Surface
Viking 2 1976 Ford (R)
Mars Global Surveyor 1997 Clinton (D)
Mars Pathfinder 1997 Clinton (D)
Mars Odyssey 2001 Bush (R)
MER-A (Spirit) 2004 Bush (R)
MER-B (Opportunity) 2004 Bush (R)
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 2006 Bush (R)
Pheonix 2008 Bush (R)
Dawn 2009 Obama (D)
MSL (Curiosity) 2012 Obama (D)
Looking at that list there seem to be a lot of R's.... but then again, many of these projects were started well before whoever happened to be in office was there when they arrived at Mars.
Don't get me wrong; Curiosity is an incredible achievement, and I'm really excited about its success, as well as hopeful for the new project just announced. But it does bug me that a lot of people are treating it as though it's a once-in-a-generation achievement, akin to Armstrong walking on the moon. Fact is, we've been at Mars for a long time. Fact is, both Democrats and Republicans have been around while we've been doing it.
I got a big kick out of our current President's science adviser speaking at the landing-- I stayed up to watch the whole thing. He said something to the effect of "No other nation has ever been to Mars; no other nation has ever been to another planet." I remember distinctly, because I was drinking a glass of water at the time, and ended up with half of it on me as I choked. The next morning, all of the news articles I had looked up to verify that Holdren had indeed said this had conveniently changed the quote to something completely different, showing that somebody pointed out that he had just made a big error.
Fact: the Russians were the first to land on Mars. Fact: the Russians have also been quite successful with landings on Venus. Fact: the ESA, JAXA and the UK have all been working on projects to Mars. Mars Express is a successful ESA orbiter. The UK sent the Beagle lander with Mars Express, but it was lost in the landing. That's nothing to be ashamed of.. every country that has tried to go to Mars has had failures. If these three agencies keep trying, they'll have plenty of success in studying Mars, or any other planet they choose to visit.
<rant>
Stuxnet, Duqu and Flamer-Skywiper being the previous iterations of the same Operation Project Olympic attack plan.
This is not a complete sentence; there's no verb.
Last month, President Obama's staff has admitted to the New York Times...
We use present perfect tense for referring to events that happened at an unspecified time in the past. You can't use it when you specify that the event happened last month.
...there is a joint Israel-U.S. cybermilitary operation was behind the mishaps Iranians have recently been suffering with their UF6 gas refining centrifuge systems in the Natanz and Fordo plants.
The rest of this sentence is too long and complicated. In addition, it has two verbs. Compounding the problem, the two verbs have opposing tenses.
I really do dislike grammar nazis, and I try to avoid ever saying anything about errors since I make plenty myself, but these kinds of errors are hard to read and understand. Timothy, do you even read things before they get posted?!
</rant, hopefully forever.>
Seriously, I do appreciate what all the /. editors do. It's hard to parse through all the article submissions that you get and make sure everything makes sense. It's also hard for us to parse the posted article summaries when the grammar mistakes make one's head spin.
Whether evolution would ‘replay the tape of life’ if given the opportunity has long fascinated biologists. Paleogenetics via laboratory resurrected ancient genes not only reveals information regarding ancestral phenotypes and environments but also provides an opportunity to ‘replay’ the molecular tape of life.
IANAB, but it doesn't make sense to me that this experiment does what she is claiming. I can understand learning about "ancestral phenotypes", but "replay the molecular tape of life"? That would only be possible if the cells were exposed to the same conditions they would have 500 million years ago, correct? With environmental conditions being a chaotic system, you'd have to get it exactly right-- impossible given we don't have an exact knowledge of those conditions. At best you might argue that you can show chaotic fluctuations in the system have little impact if the evolution takes nearly the same track, but then you'd have to wait 500 million years for that... Unless modern E. Coli is more prolific than it's ("great-" * 10e9) + "grandparents."
I would think if you're examining fixed vs multi-point evolutionary paths, a better experiment would be to clone a number of cells (cloned to ensure identical genetics at the start) and grow them in isolated but (very nearly) identical environments. Using ancient DNA sequences won't help us see if the path leads to modern genes without waiting a few thousand millenia.
Again, IANAB, but the premise of this experiment seems ill-placed. Any biologists around that can clarify for us?